In modern medical engineering today, many processes and methods, such as the performance of an operation, treatment planning or reporting, are based on acquired medical images. One example of this is medical radiology. By way of example, many operations today are performed with the assistance of images, which means that the surgeon or doctor can also track and correct the intervention with the assistance of images.
For the benefit of the patient and to reduce the applied dose of radiation, it is naturally desirable for as few images as possible to need to be acquired in principle. Conversely, however, this means that images, once acquired, also need to be available for later processes and that the acquired images need to shared with other users, for example for the purposes of a clinical council or a comprehensive diagnosis. Furthermore, the medical images are frequently not acquired in one and the same medical entity (e.g. in a hospital), but rather are required at different locations, which likewise results in the respective image data needing to be interchanged between the processing entities involved.
For efficient cooperation of radiologists, it is indispensible for an efficient system for interchanging image data to be provided. However, it is necessary to ensure that the legal provisions concerning security are observed. These require security-critical or confidential data records not to be distributed beyond particular boundaries.
By way of example, it is necessary to ensure that information identifying the respective patient (such as name, age, date of birth, etc.) does not fall into unauthorized hands. These security-critical data records are frequently also called PHI information (PHI—protected health information). The data interchange therefore needs to take place in compliance with the rules, so that the PHI data records are visible only inside the respective hospital or inside the hospital department, for example.
In the prior art, there are two concepts, in principle, for information systems in order to allow collaboration between radiologists. A first approach is based on transmitting the complete screen interface content to another computer interface of the cooperating radiologist. A second concept is based on transmitting only the basic medical images.
However, the second approach requires the cooperating radiologist to whom the images are meant to be sent to himself have the appropriate software and hardware on his computer in order to be able to actually show the image data records. This means a corresponding level of installation and maintenance complexity. Problems arise particularly when the sending system and the receiving system do not have the same equipment on the computer.
For more extensive applications, it is furthermore necessary for the same tools to be available. In some cases, it is even necessary for the same version of a software application to be installed on both the sending appliance and the receiving appliance in order to be able to ensure error-free transmission. The known methods therefore have considerable disadvantages, since increased infrastructure complexity is incurred on both systems.
In the case of the first-mentioned systems, which thus involve the complete screen content being transmitted, problems also arise because the transmission of the images frequently does not comply with the security standard. By way of example, it may be a simple matter for the complete image data records to be sent to the cooperating radiologist even though the latter is situated outside a security domain (e.g. outside the hospital) of the sending radiologist. When the images are sent, confidential data records are automatically also transmitted beyond the security boundaries, which is not permissible.